


Over It

by servantofclio



Series: Julian Shepard [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Pre-Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 02:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10526760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: Oh, that old crush? Tali's so over it.Or maybe she isn't.





	

“You must be Tali.”

Tali looked left and right, but the voice came out of nowhere, as far as she could tell. She turned around, wondering if someone had approached from behind, but she still saw no one. Only as she kept pivoting did a person shimmer into view, an electronic scatter field dissolving.

“Sorry, forgot my manners. I’m Kasumi Goto.”

The speaker was a human woman, about Tali’s size, dressed in a close-fitting dark suit with a hood that fell partly over her face, concealing her eyes. It didn’t conceal her mouth, curved in a friendly smile.

“Oh! Hello.” In spite of the peculiar entrance, Tali put out her hand, human-style. Around Shepard, you had to get used to peculiar greetings. Kasumi accepted it with a firm clasp. “Do you always sneak up on people that way?” Tali asked, and then added, because she couldn’t help herself: “That’s a very good tactical cloak, though.” It gave her an itchy feeling, in fact, since she’d so many geth hunter platforms use similar technology. The geth cloaking fields might not even be quite as good, in fact; with geth, you could usually see the shimmer if you knew what to look for.

“Not always,” Kasumi replied, releasing Tali’s hand. “Only when I forget myself. ‘Course, most people are lucky to see me at all.”

“You must be the thief Shepard mentioned.” This cheerfully smiling human was not quite what Tali would have imagined from a professional thief.

“In the flesh!” Kasumi spread her hands. “Shepard’s told me a lot about you. And thanks, by the way, I refined the cloak program myself.”

“You did?” Tali said, interest piqued, and then tilted her head, registering the rest of Kasumi’s remark. “Wait, he said a lot? About me?”

“Of course he did.” Kasumi’s smile broadened. “Are you on duty, or do you have time to talk?”

“Well…” Tali checked the time, surprised to find that her shift had ended forty minutes ago. She’d been dimly aware of Ken and Gabby signing out and heading off, bickering amiably with each other, but she’d been so absorbed in her own work that she hadn’t noticed how much time had passed. “I’m off-duty, technically.”

“Great! Why don’t you come up to the lounge with me and we can have a chat?”

“Lounge?” Tali asked, startled. The old _Normandy_ hadn’t had much in the way of social space for the crew. “I don’t know, I’m still getting up to speed on everything…”

“I promise I’ve got dextro drinks, too.”

Tali wavered before giving in. She was curious, and it would be good to get to know some of the new crew. “All right, let’s see this lounge.”

#

“It’s _huge_ ,” Tali marveled as she paced slowly around the lounge, cataloging all the oddities of the space. So much space, and so sparsely occupied. Tali glanced curiously at the various artworks Kasumi had arranged around the end of the lounge she’d claimed as her own. All that, and books — old ones, made of real paper, creased and faded around the edges — almost no one on the Migrant Fleet had books like that. And besides that, there was the sprawling couch, and the enormous viewport. The latter had to be a structural weakness in the ship, she’d have to check the schematics and see how the ship’s construction compensated for it.

“It really is, Cerberus went all out,” Kasumi agreed, from her position behind the bar. She brought Tali a drink in a bulb with a long neck. “All filtered and safe, promise.”

“Thanks.” Tali fit the valve into her suit’s intake port and sipped it: a pleasantly fizzy sweetness that she recognized as a popular dextro soda. With — mm — a little added kick that tingled in her mouth. “That’s nice.”

“Excellent.” Kasumi settled into the couch, waving a hand. “Make yourself at home.”

Tali sat down herself, immediately sinking into a luxurious cushioned surface that seemed to cradle her. “Keelah.”

“Nice, isn’t it?” Kasumi tucked her feet up underneath herself, settling back to enjoy her own drink. “I’d steal this couch if I had anywhere to put it.”

“Right off the _Normandy_?”

Kasumi shrugged. “Why not?”

Tali looked around. “I suppose you stole the whole lounge, instead.”

Kasumi laughed in delight. “I suppose I did, at that!”

They talked for a while — first about Kasumi’s cloak, which she’d reverse-engineered from geth designs; and from there they wandered into talking about geth technology generally, and Tali’s combat drone, and then they spent a while discussing their preferred omni-tool models and mods. Kasumi was very knowledgeable about high-end prototypes, besides being an enthusiastic hacker, and Tali found herself enjoying the conversation immensely. She’d rarely met a human so willing to get into technical details, except maybe Shepard, and when she’d met Shepard she’d been a little overawed, nervous, unsure of her place on the crew. Kasumi was easy to talk to right from the start.

“Shepard says he likes the Logic Arrests, but I’m not sure I really believe him,” Tali finished.

Kasumi laughed, making Tali giggle too. She felt pleasantly fizzy herself by now.

“You’ve been with Shepard a long time,” Kasumi observed.

“Yes, since the beginning. Well, not the very beginning,” Tali corrected herself. “I wasn’t there on Eden Prime, but I met Shepard soon after.”

“How did that happen?” Kasumi looped her arms around her bent knees, all interest.

“Well…” Tali said. “It’s kind of a long story, but…”

“I’d love to hear it,” Kasumi said with a smile.

Tali tried to arrange her thoughts into the appropriate order. She had to explain about her Pilgrimage first, and how she’d been quick enough, and lucky enough, to extract a geth memory core that had the critical evidence against Saren. She hadn’t thought she was so lucky at the time, forced to run for her life and flee to the Citadel.

“Sounds scary,” Kasumi said sympathetically.

Tali nodded. “There I was, alone on my Pilgrimage, and everything seemed to be going wrong.” She shivered, remembering how afraid she’d been that she’d never make it home to the Fleet at all.

“So how did Shep come into it?”

“I was trying to sell the recording, just to get it out of my hands.” Tali sighed. “So I tried to make a deal with the Shadow Broker, but it turned out my contact sold me out. I didn’t have a good feeling about any of it. Fortunately for me, Shepard was on my trail and got there in time.”

“In the nick of time, huh?”

“ _Just_ in time,” Tali said, waving her hands for emphasis. “Right when they were opening fire on me. I’d rigged a grenade, I could defend myself, but there were more of them, and they would’ve kept following me. If Shepard hadn’t gotten there…” She trailed off. She’d thought about it more than once, over the years, sometimes waking up shaken from a dream where he hadn’t.

“And now that sounds like something out of a vid,” Kasumi said.

“I know.” Tali had thought that, as well, sometimes mentally casting herself in Shepard in a dramatic romance, with swelling music, and soulful confessions, and… well. She sighed. “I used to have the biggest crush on him.”

“Used to?” Kasumi tilted her head, her eyes bright in the shadow of her hood.

“It was kind of hard not to, considering,” Tali said. “I mean, there I was, alone and in danger, and then the dashing hero came swooping in for the rescue. And not only that, but he respected me, and asked me to join his crew.” She shook her head. “Do you know how rare that is for a quarian? Most people are barely polite, let alone treating you like an equal. But not Shepard, no, he just accepted all of us. He’d even come down to Engineering and listen while I’d go on and on about the Fleet, and he helped me get what I needed to complete my Pilgrimage.”

“I can see how there’d be some appeal,” Kasumi said. “Do you find humans attractive, though?”

“Oh, yes,” Tali said, remembering a few fantasies she wasn’t about to confess, not at all. “I mean, not all humans, but some humans. I mean, Shepard is good-looking, don’t you think?”

Kasumi chuckled. “Oh, absolutely, but I don’t think my opinion is the one the matters. He’s definitely got a great body, though. You gotta love those super fit military types.”

“Yeah,” Tali sighed, thinking wistfully about those broad shoulders and solid muscles and… She shook her head, trying to clear it. “So, you know. It was hard not to have a crush back then.”

“Mm. Yeah,” Kasumi said. “What about now?”

Tali blinked, pulling herself out of her reverie. She’d never really talked to anyone about this before, and somehow talking about all those old feeling was dredging them up, leaving her feeling both nostalgic and a little flushed and emotional overall. “Wait, what about now?”

“You said back then. Are you sure you don’t still have a crush?”

“Oh,” Tali said, alarmed. “No. No, no… Shepard’s a friend, a good friend, but…”

Kasumi smiled. “You’re sure? Not even a little crush?”

“Well, I mean…” Tali hesitated. Of course, she still thought Shepard was attractive, she’d just said so, hadn’t she? And she’d never had such a good friend — even among her own people, really — and even considering Cerberus, she still trusted him more than almost anyone, but… “Of course I care about Shepard,” — worried about him, even — “but we’re just friends. Really.”

“Oh. Okay.” Kasumi sat back, apparently focused on her drink.

Tali regarded her suspiciously. “Okay?”

Kasumi shrugged. “Hey, if you say so. You’re the one who knows yourself best.”

Tali pressed the back of her tongue against her teeth. Keelah, she’d tried so hard not to dwell once she’d seen Shepard and Ashley edging toward each other. She like them both, they were both her friends, she’d been happy for them…

But she couldn’t help being a little wistful at the same time. Shepard had never seemed to see her the way he looked at Ash. There was no real reason he should, they weren’t even the same species, and besides, he was older, he had his own ship already, he was a Spectre, even, and she had been just a kid on her Pilgrimage…

Tali sighed. She’d had two years, _two years_ , to mourn for Shepard and move on, and she had. She’d settled into her new position on the _Neema_ , she’d undertaken missions for the admirals, she’d even flirted with other people. She shouldn’t have gotten over that old crush by now. Hadn’t she gotten over it?

Sitting on the couch, her head swimming with whatever that fizzy drink had been, Tali definitely didn’t feel over it.

“Tali? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, as Kasumi peered at her with concern. “Sorry. I’m just… thinking.”

Kasumi chuckled. “That’s a dangerous pastime, you know.”

The door slid open, and Shepard himself stood in the doorway. Tali froze, shrinking into her seat. Normally she’d be happy to see Shepard, but he was the last person she wanted to see right now. Oh, Keelah, maybe she was a little too happy to see Shepard, usually? She was going to be analyzing her every reaction to him for _days_ , now, wasn’t she?

“Hey, Shep!” Kasumi said brightly.

“Hey,” Shepard replied amiably. “How are two of my favorite crew members?”

“Fine,” Tali blurted. “Fine. Hi, Shepard.”

“Hi, Tali. Did you finish up the diagnostics you wanted to do?” Shepard crossed to the bar and looked over the bottles.

“Most of them. Not everything. Sorry, Kasumi came down to say hi and then… I can go back and finish them.” Tali started to get up, cursing the way the couch had sucked her in.

“Tali, relax. No one expects you to work all the time.” Shepard stepped behind the bar to pour himself something. In spite of herself, Tali watched the way his arm muscles flexed.

She forced a laugh, sinking back into the cushions. “Right, of course.”

Shepard crossed back to the couch and sat a little ways down from Tali. “I’m glad you two seem to be hitting it off, actually. I hoped you would.”

“Peas in a pod,” Kasumi said. “Right, Tali?”

Tali glanced at Kasumi warily. She didn’t know how Kasumi did it, but she would swear that the woman twinkled at her. “Right,” she said. “Though I don’t know if I’m so sneaky as you.”

Shepard laughed, a nice warm sound that made Tali feel like melting. “Well, we only need one person as stealthy as Kasumi, really.”

“It’s kind of my thing,” Kasumi said, leaning back with a sly smile. “Did you tell her about the party we went to, Shep?”

Shepard shook his head.

“Party?” Tali asked. A pang of jealousy went through her, and she promptly snatched it up and stuffed it away. There wasn’t anything to be jealous of.

“It was more of an infiltration mission,” Shepard said, settling in to tell the story.

Tali sucked in the last of her fizzy drink as she listened, watching every movement of Shepard’s face and hands while he talked. Wondering just what he looked like in the fancy suit Kasumi mentioned.

Damn Kasumi and her fizzy drinks, anyway. Tali had been perfectly fine not thinking about that old crush.

The one she was most definitely not over.


End file.
